There are certain goods and services that consumers frequently purchase that fluctuate in price on a regular basis. These include fuel products; such as, gasoline, diesel, heating oil; food products; and a variety of services. Often the price fluctuations are most noted in commodity items of widespread consumption such as gasoline.
Traditionally, the oil and food industries have provided consumers with a variety of advanced cash deposit schemes to facilitate future purchases of commodities. Some examples are:
a) A prepaid gasoline card (e.g. Mobil, BP, Exxon, Citgo) where consumers pre-pay for a certain value of gasoline e.g. $25.00. This card usually acts as a gift certificate and is usually issued to family members, students or employees in the knowledge that it can be spent only on gasoline.
b) A fuel account at a service station where no credit terms have been agreed. An advanced cash deposit bond is usually required as security.
c) A supermarket Christmas savings club.
d) A pre-paid in-store deposit account providing supermarket customers with a means of controlling their shopping budget and avoid running up a credit bill.
In the above scenarios, when consumers spend their cash deposits on goods, they do so at a price in effect at the time of redemption. There is currently no method available that allows consumers to redeem at the price in effect at the time the cash payment was made. This is an important distinction because the price of the goods or services may have moved against the consumer in the meantime and the worth of the pre-paid monetary value deposit will have eroded.
Some purchasing systems have been introduced in certain industry segments in an effort to address some of these issues. Consumers are able to pre-purchase cellular air time in quantity terms not dollar terms. Many plans allow a user to buy a phone card with a certain number of minutes for a set price. Often this pre-purchased air time is in lieu of a monthly plan whereby the user commits to a set monthly fee with a fixed number of minutes being included in the fee. These plans are directed at occasional users or users with very low incomes who are not willing or able to purchase larger quantities or who require the lowest cost entry point. As a result, these plans are typically offered at higher per unit cost than traditional plans. Furthermore, as there is little price fluctuation in the price of these services (cellular air time) the plans are not designed to protect a consumer against price fluctuations by banking or storing the quantity for protection against price volatility.
Thus there is a need for a system which protects consumers' deposits against market price fluctuations and which makes it easy for consumers to pre-purchase fixed quantities of goods or services in advance. This need has heretofore not been met.
In addition to the area of consumer goods and services, there are many goods or services that businesses may wish to pre-purchase for later delivery, in whole or in part. An example of this is:
A fleet manager pre-purchases 5000 gallons of diesel for pick up by his individual truck drivers in 100 gallon quantities at truck stop locations over time. Once ordered, this 5000 gallon full tanker-load of diesel is physically deposited into any tank, with available tank capacity, within the designated truck stop network.
These will-call types of future pick-ups are usually accounted for in monetary value on agreed credit terms or against an advanced monetary down-payment. The physical product itself (diesel) has to be ordered and deposited into the underground tanks, which have a limited capacity. It is administratively cumbersome to pre-arrange for such types of purchases and requires a detailed audit trail, real time tank capacity, readings, and complex billing to handle this type of pre-purchase.
In the above example, there is a need for a system that allows the fleet manager to pre-purchase a ‘full tanker-load’ of diesel at the lowest ‘full tanker-load’ price, lock-in that price, and credit an account. At this point, no physical diesel has actually been delivered but a quantity is held on reserve that can be redeemed in part or in whole. This type of system would allow truck drivers to conveniently draw from a pre-paid reserve account in smaller fill-ups from any truck stop in a large network.
A feature of the system could include seamless integration to proprietary business accounting packages which do not readily provide the facility to hold accounts in quantity units where the pre-purchased units of goods or services are held on reserve.
In general, there is a need for a convenient system which allows both business and consumer purchasers to pre-purchase commodities in larger bulk quantities at discount prices, hold those quantities in a reserve account and redeem, in smaller quantity increments, at convenient points of distribution. In this way, businesses will save money by purchasing large quantities of goods or services at bulk prices whilst operating under the usual practical constraints of redeeming in smaller quantities over time.
There is also a need for businesses supplying many types of goods and services to offer additional means to establish or increase customer loyalty. Without systems to do so, purchasers faced with rapidly changing pricing with respect to standardized goods or services will often purchase from the vendor having the lowest price and will not tend to remain loyal to one brand vendor over another. This is particularly so when dealing with commodities such as gasoline.